


her turn to shine

by random_chick



Category: Kushiel's Legacy - Jacqueline Carey
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:18:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_chick/pseuds/random_chick
Summary: He had been decent to her when she came into the marriage; she would be decent to him when he left it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/gifts).



Even at sixteen, Melisande Shahrizai knew how to keep her hands clean.

She’d been married for six months and, while her husband was a perfectly decent man -- if a little boring -- he wasn’t needed anymore. He’d outlived his usefulness and it was time for something to be done about him. Melisande was of the opinion that it was for the best she deal with him, though, before anyone _else_ decided he’d outlived his usefulness.

_She_ at least liked the man a little. She wouldn’t call it respect, no, but he had been decent to her when she came into the marriage; she would be decent to him when he left it.

But Melisande was smart. If she did anything herself to end his life, the odds were good that at attention would be called in her direction, simply by virtue of the fact that she was the man’s wife and a dead man’s wife was almost always looked at with suspicion. She would like to be looked at and glossed over, thank you very much.

So she contracted the duty out to someone, and of course she’d known where to find such a person because she was a Shahrizai and they knew those things. Whether for nefarious reasons or as a simple matter of knowing all things dark and dirty, someone in her family almost always knew how to do something or who could do it. Normal people always worried a little about them. (They personally said that normal was highly overrated and kept right on with what made them who they were.)

Melisande hadn’t been sure when the man she’d hired would strike -- she’d known what he was going to do, though not precisely when -- so she’d been cautious the past few days about where she went, which wasn’t at all an unusual thing; her husband was used to her wanting to stay home, and not always to remain in bed. They were both remarkably intelligent people and enjoyed pursuits that allowed them to show off said intellects. So staying close to home for a while every morning? Not such a strange thing.

Most people would have tired of the wait, even though it was just a couple of days; Melisande was anything but most people. When day three came and nothing had happened yet, she was in a frowning mood as she went about her morning routine, but she did nothing to actually register her displeasure. Her patience was rewarded as day three came to a close, though, after another day of waiting patiently and wondering to herself -- but not out loud, never out loud, she didn’t know who might overhear and she wasn’t going to blow things that easily -- when things were going to happen.

And then it was Melisande’s turn to shine; she was the one who found him, the one who suffered that unimaginable trauma, the person who people were going to sympathize with forever. (Even when similar would happen to another husband two years later, people weren’t going to worry quite as much as they should have.) She was a beautiful actress, too, knew exactly when to cry, and how much to cry, and when to smile. She knew how to give just the right tilt of head and the right bat of eyelash. She knew how convey strength shaken by something scary.

She knew, in short, how to play what she should have been -- a sixteen-year-old woman who, traditional or not, was strong, oh so strong, but had that shard (or more than a shard) of vulnerability that everybody could tell would eventually crack.

Except where any other woman had vulnerability, Melisande had no such thing. No, she had steel, and that core of it was only going to grow. Melisande was only sixteen, and she was already far stronger than some women twice her age would ever be.

At the moment, though, she was pretending strength that would eventually give way to weakness, that was starting to grieve the loss of her husband. It was so laughably easy. Not that she wanted much of a challenge, really -- she loved a good challenge, but this was not a situation where they needed one to erupt, or to even risk one.

Despite the thousand and one things she had to do as a grieving widow, the thousand and one things she had to do in order to convincingly _play_ a grieving widow, Melisande showed none of the strain in private. In private she was perfectly fine. And of course she was. Why wouldn’t she be? She was the one who’d had her husband poisoned, after all.

But then a knock would come at the door, followed by somebody who didn’t always think it was appropriate to knock, and Melisande would slam the act back into place in the blink of an eye. She hadn’t done it around anybody, because there wasn’t anybody she trusted with the knowledge that she had orchestrated this herself, after all, but if there were? They would see an effortless slide from mercenary young woman to grieving girl who wanted to cling to being a child, and it would happen with a painfulness that would make whoever saw it want to cry.

Melisande liked making people cry -- simply because it meant that they were off-guard, and when people were off-guard, then you could get all sorts of interesting things out of them. Or else you could just get them to leave you alone, depending on what you wanted from them. Like now, her late husband had been holding back on a good bit of knowledge that he’d held; once he’d revealed it, he’d outlived his usefulness.

It was better for him that she’d been the one to take care of things, really it was. Some of her family members -- read all of them -- wouldn’t have been nearly so gentle. Nearly so polite. Wouldn’t have chosen methods that were as peaceful as poisoning.

That was the Melisande Shahrizai version of polite and concerned, apparently. It was the best she generally did and ever would do.


End file.
